The air must be fresh in Aspen, and in Santa Fe as well.
Something out West has given Aspen Santa Fe Ballet remarkable brio. Directed
by Tom Mossbrucker and Jean-Philippe Malaty, this company of twelve spirited
dancers has a diverse and somewhat offbeat repertory, and it's managed
to thrive in two home towns, succeeding in the sort of dual-city scheme
that has defeated other companies with similar ambitions (remember Cleveland/San
Jose, Cincinnati/New Orleans, Philadelphia/Milwaukee?).

The dancers brought a sense of adventure to every ballet
they showed in this engagement, which they dedicated to the memory of
Clive Barnes. Most of their works celebrated energy, and it was exciting
to seem them danced with abandon. Yet the most stimulating piece was not
a virtuoso display, although it was a ballet about being on display.

Chameleon by
Itzik Galili Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

In Itzik Galili's "Chameleon," five women sat
in a row of chairs facing downstage, knees quivering nervously as the
curtain rose. Then they displayed themselves in various emotional states.
They sometimes preened, as if gazing into mirrors. They might have been
fashion models. Or, perhaps, they were trying to attract the attention
of an employer, a casting director, or a potential date. Or maybe they
were amusing themselves by contemplating their own chameleon-like self-images,
for they made funny and grotesque faces. But they also occasionally appeared
panic-stricken. And as we in the audience beheld their changes, we became
voyeurs of these characters deftly portrayed by Lauren Alzamora, Katie
Dehler, Samantha Klanac, Elizabeth Martinez, and Emily Proctor.

Galili made the women amusing. But as they kept posing to
quiet music by John Cage, their actions grew poignant as well as comic,
and Galili implied that we are all obsessed with the way we appear both
to others and to ourselves. "How do we look?" these women seemed
perpetually to be asking, as if dreading to lose self-confidence. And
before the ballet ended, we in the audience may have wanted to assure
them, "You look perfectly fine, my dears."

High energy dominated the other ballets. Given the extraordinary
athleticism of today's dancers, energy, for better or worse, has become
the theme of many, perhaps too many, ballets. William Forsythe's "Slingerland
Pas de Deux," to music by Gavin Bryars, began by looking as if it
might be a traditional pas de deux. But it soon became more than that,
for Katherine Eberle and Sam Chittenden emphasized Forsythe's contrasts
between harmony and tension, pushing and pulling at each other, not in
a spirit of aggressive competition, but to suggest an interplay of strong
forces.

Chameleon by Itzik Galili. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

Helen Pickett, who has worked with Forsythe in Frankfurt,
contributed "Petal," in which four couples kept regrouping to
music by Philip Glass and Thomas Montgomery Newman, kicking briskly and
letting their arms thrust into space. There was a great sense of outwardness
about "Petal," and its finale sent dancers running off, perhaps
into new worlds. The production was visually enhanced by its set of white
walls which, thanks to Todd Elmer's lighting, kept changing gorgeously
flamboyant shades of yellow, orange, red, and pink. "Petal"
flowered.

One of today's most controversial energy specialists is
Jorma Elo, notorious for shattering and pulverizing classical steps. He
did it again in "1st Flash," to his own taped splintering of
parts of the Sibelius violin concerto. Elo's athletic choreography often
arouses groans of annoyance as well as gasps of amazement. Here, his taxing
steps appeared to be dismantling his dancers' skeletons, scattering bones
and limbs hither and thither.

Elo can possibly cite artistic precedents for his procedures.
So he's pinching, twisting,. and tweaking classicism? All sorts of choreographers
do that, including Forsythe. So he lets music and dance be apparently
unrelated? Why, that's nothing new: consider what Merce Cunningham has
been doing for decades. But Elo suggests no rationale for his disjunctions,
and his phrases form and disintegrate so relentlessly that watching them
grows tiresome. "1st Flash" made its dancers unattractively
jittery, as if overdosing on choreographic caffeine.

Fortunately, the energy in Aspen Santa Fe's other offerings
proved more invigorating, and Galili's piece suggested that the dancers
had lyrical, comic, and dramatic gifts worth further development.